Fourteen-year-old Cathreen is at a turning point: ahead of her is more of the path that has taken her to a lake at a deserted scout camp where a girl is bullied and left to drown; behind her is the dull existence she leads with her mother in a small Vancouver Island town. But long before Cathreen there is the story of the three lost stones, fallen from Lucifer's crown—a story in which her father's family in Glastonbury has played its part. When Cathreen flees to England to find her father, she steps across a boundary into a landscape where good and evil, justice, vengeance and enduring love vie for prime place in the human heart. It is here she must make her choice.
The Utopian community of Summerwood, where she finds refuge, inhabits a strange ground where contemporary events brush up against mythology, a place populated by characters who ultimately reveal themselves to be not only the rag-tag collection of lost souls they seem, but also players in stark and mysterious drama.
There's Nick, the environmentalist, armed with a dream; Merry, his friend, who holds the key to love and forgiveness in a puzzle of changed identity decades old; Galt, risen from the bog—half-monster, half human, devoted to his "Master"; and "Pam," the blonde, buxom beach babe he has seen on TV. Comedy and tragedy take turns as Cathreen searches for her father, and her father, Jag, attempts to control the chaos he has let loose.
Watching over them is Cutthroat, the cat, whose own attempt to find happiness is the engine of the tale.
Like Visible Worlds, Marilyn Bowering's acclaimed previous novel, this is a story intricately woven, a magical, multi-layered page-turner that will appeal to lovers of contemporary literary fiction and fantasy.
